Ex-mental Patient Checks May Be Breach Of Privacy

SANFORD -- A policy requiring state workers to make follow-up calls and visits to former mental patients could violate patient`s right to privacy, the Sanford Herald reported Saturday.

The Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services requires that caseworkers monitor former patients and instructs them to be ``relentless and persistent in linking clients and families to needed supports and services.``

The guidelines were adopted after Willam Ferry, a former mental patient, firebombed a Tampa supermarket in 1982, killing five people. Mental health workers were criticized for failing to check up on Ferry after his treatment at a hospital.

Although the follow-up program is voluntary for patients, the rules are widely interpreted by local offices governed and funded by HRS. Some caseworkers said they are pressured by the HRS to continue attempting to contact patients and their families when patients refuse help, monitoring them from a distance if necessary.

``HRS expects me to call them. They require me to. If I didn`t and something happended, somebody`s going to be on my back,`` said psychiatric nurse Kim Proctor, who oversees eight case managers assigned to about 100 former patients.

Proctor said that when one former mental patient who continued to see a private psychiatrist told Proctor to leave her alone, an HRS supervisor ordered Proctor to check with the patient`s private psychologist.

HRS officials insist that caseworkers respect former patients` wishes to be left alone, but concede that they often attempt to maintain contact when patients refuse their aid.